Quentin Tarantino Developing A STAR TREK Film

Quentin Tarantino wants to make a Star Trek movie and Paramount is interested in making it happen.

Deadline is reporting that the maverick writer/director has had a great idea for a Star Trek film that he shared with JJ Abrams, who recently relaunched the cinema-side of the science-fiction franchise for Paramount. Abrams and the studio were reportedly excited enough by the idea that the studio is setting up a writer’s room to hear Tarantino’s idea and begin development of it. If everything goes to plan, Tarantino will direct the end result.

If the film does come together, this will mark the second time that Tarantino will work with material that did not originate with the writer/director. The only previous time that he has worked with another’s material was when he adapted Elmore Leonard’s 1992 novel Rum Punch into 1997’s Jackie Brown.

I know that there is probably a lot of head scratching going on over the pairing of Tarantino and Trek, but quite frankly it makes sense to me. Tarantino has always been about taking pulp tropes and redefining them. The original Gene Roddenerry-created Star Trek TV series did the same for television science-fiction, taking standard outer space adventure stories and turning them into weekly morality plays that commented on socio-political issues of the day.

And Tarantino has hinted that before he was a Star Trek fan. The first of his two part homage to revenge films Kill Bill opens with the Klingon proverb “Revenge is a dish best served cold” from perhaps the franchise’s best cinematic installment Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan.

Currently, Tarantino is in pre-production for his untitled film about murdered actress Sharon Tate for an August 9, 2019 release. Abrams is starting up work on Star Wars: Episode IX for December 2019.

A film fan since he first saw that Rebel Blockade Runner fleeing the massive Imperial Star Destroyer at the tender age of 8 and a veteran freelance journalist with twenty years experience writing about film and pop culture.